Being Kari. Qarnita Loxton
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(Gemini for me, Scorpio for Dirk), looking for some crazy clue I had missed that could have tipped me off about the disaster that was Friday. The only clue – and it was not an obvious one – I found on my phone in a last-ditch google of the “importance of 14 February 2014”. Some number jumbo about it having been “a unique day because its specific circumstances have never happened before and can’t happen again for eighteen thousand years. The Valentine’s Day of 14 February 2014 has the month and day numbers reflected in the year number”.
Great. It has never happened before and it isn’t going to happen again for eighteen thousand years. Lucky. Going to bookmark affinitynumerology.com in case they send out some kind of heads-up alert for when the numbers say your husband is going to cheat and your gran is going to die. And that family who hates you? You’re going to move in with them for six weeks.
Never happened before. And not again for eighteen thousand years. Hallelujah.
Six weeks! How did I even get myself into that? Stupid self, nodding at Dhanyal like that.
The early morning wake up didn’t help me get out of bed. I stayed there the whole day, hiding. It seemed easier to eavesdrop on Di’s life than try to deal with my own. I listened. Heard Di and Alan getting the girls, Kate and Sarah, ready for school. Di always said it was a nagfest in the morning but I’d never really believed her. This morning the scales fell from my eyes. Di made being a mother to Kate and Sarah look easy; hearing the school routine confirmed that it was actually at least as hard as I suspected. What kind of mother would I be? What would it have been like if Dirk and I had had children?
At 12:30 Di came into the room. She stood at the side of the bed with another cup of coffee and a fresh toasted cheese sandwich on a tray. A perfect latte-art heart sat on the foam. She’d learned to make all kinds of things at the zillion courses she did to keep sane.
“Come on, I’ve left you alone long enough, let’s see what you need to do today.” She put the coffee and the sandwich down next to the bedside clock and picked up the pasta bowl. “I’m going to have to leave for Woolies soon and then get the kids at school. Are you okay here?”
I’m sure Di never spent a day in bed in her life. Not even when Alan went AWOL. I felt stupid just lying there in a pile of newspapers, glued to my phone, Medusa hair all over. But I couldn’t get myself to do anything else.
“Kari, come on, let’s make a plan,” Di said. I wasn’t in Egypt, but I think Di could see in my eyes that the guest bed was my Survivor Island and I wasn’t ready to get voted off just yet. She sat down and put her arms around me instead, as if I was one of her girls. “Have you spoken to Dirk? He called here a few times yesterday asking how you are. I told him you were probably going to stay here but that I didn’t know anything more . . . He sounds as shattered as you look,” she added softly into my hair.
I had no answers. I just cried on her shoulder for a long time.
10
02:30 PM Dirk: Hi, let me know you’re ok? Please ring me. Love you x
Di tried her best to get me to move but I stayed in that room, even when Kate and Sarah were home. It was just not my day for playing princesses and tiaras. I listened to Di give them lunch and help with homework, like a family sitcom playing on the TV in another room. Who would’ve thought a seven- and a nine-year-old could have so much homework? And that Di could say the same thing so many times without losing her mind. Silence while they all rushed off somewhere and came back from somewhere, and then the Bartlett Family Barney was back on full volume. Homework with more foodfest, nagfest, moanfest – except this time it ended with them going off to bed just as Alan got home. I was sure I didn’t have what it took to be good at it. The mother thing.
Loud hellos from Alan and goodnights from the girls to their dad, the two ships nearly passing in the night. And then a knock on my door, his door. Alan stuck his head into the room. He crinkled a grey monobrow at me. (Has it been that long since I last saw him? That mono is new, I’m sure. Had Di been waxing it before?)
“Can I come in?” he asked. I guessed he meant Just quickly, before Di comes.
Somehow LSDoK were off limits to Alan after he and Di’s thing, after his fling, and so I hadn’t seen him in a while. Two nights I’d spent in his home and we hadn’t even been allowed to bump into each other. On my nod, his stripy shirtsleeves and then the rest of his body crept quickly around the door into the room. The collar of his shirt was loose around his neck; the past year must have taken some weight.
“Di told me what happened, Kari. I’m really very sorry. And about your gran, obviously.” He shoved his hands halfway into his pockets, hairy bits poking out the top. (Jeez, did Di used to wax the man everywhere?) He looked like a big pregnant woman trying to hold up her belly, standing there, except there was no baby, just the bulge of his too-big shirt. Looking at his feet, he worked one toe against the skirting, leaving a little black mark. Di would notice tomorrow.
“Men and women. We can be so stupid, sometimes we don’t think. We don’t know what we have. We take it for granted.” He said this into his moustache. (No, but seriously, how have I not noticed before how hairy Alan is?) “Maybe Di will kill me for saying it . . . but give Dirk a small chance? See what he does with it? Mistakes, even big ones, can happen to anyone. Even to you. None of us are perfect.” His eyes were red and shiny when he did look up, but he didn’t say anything more. He just smiled a straight-line smile that dimpled his cheeks but didn’t crinkle his eyes. And then he was gone. I didn’t have a chance to answer him. I wouldn’t have known what to say anyway.
I could never have done what Dirk did was all that sat in my head.
I didn’t answer Dirk either.
10:30 PM: Di says I should give you some space, that you will ring when you are ready. I will try. Love you x
Ready. Today I couldn’t leave Di’s guest bed. I was about as far from ready as it got.
11
06:30 AM Dirk: Hi, just saying Good Morning, hope your day is all right. Love you x
Hell.
Yesterday was Cry On Di Monday. Today had to be Move My Ass Tuesday. I tried my best impersonation of a reasonably functioning human being. It didn’t get off to a good start: the morning alone was an absolutely unbelievable shocker. A slow-moving slug of a shocker. Anyone who saw me get dressed, eat breakfast and drag my heels at every opportunity would’ve put money on me never getting into my car and making it to the other side.
I felt sorry for Di. There she was with the already triple whammy of getting me and Sarah and Kate out the door, which made cheering a snail race along look fast paced. That by itself would’ve been hard for anyone. But Alan! Alan was the revelation. He seemed to have stepped off Love Boat, happy and singing and trying to touch Di – ever so casually – at every chance the shared deck space of the kitchen would allow. The girls and I were so entranced that it took a while to register that Di didn’t once roll her eyes at her captain. She didn’t once lean away from his accidental-on-purpose touches. She seemed to be liking it!
This curiosity only made the girls and me even slower snails as we spied on the strangeness.
“Alan! Please, you’re in my way!” Mock outrage in Di’s voice didn’t match her eyes and didn’t have any impact on Alan. Other times I’d seen him actually run from the room when Di so much as waved him away. Would Dirk and I be like that, like Di and Alan – sort of all right but not really? Would we be able to forget Eva?
“Mom, can we have pizza after school?” asked Kate, coming out of the fog and guessing that the moment for milking was upon her, what with Di clearly dazed and disorientated.
“Okay. At the mall?” said Di, in the middle of another fake side-step with Alan.
Di’s eldest had bright teenage years ahead.
It dawned on me that my guest appearance in the Bartlett Barney show had helped Alan motivate for an upgrade